Emerge: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

by Lena Mae Hill

  “Are we your sons?” Finn asked.

  “Of course you are,” Neil said. “You’ll always be my sons.”

  “Adopted sons,” Finn clarified.

  Neil hesitated, then nodded. If he’d been carrying this weight on his shoulders, getting it off wasn’t helping. He looked ten years older than when we walked in.

  “So what does this have to do with us?” Xander asked. “Let me guess. You think I’m the demon that came through from this ‘other world’ that a crazy woman saw.”

  “Mom’s not crazy,” I said through clenched teeth.

  He gave me a look that said, Oh, please.

  “Xander, you’re not a demon. And Olivia’s not crazy. She has a rare gift. The gift of Baldur.”

  “That’s what you call it?” I asked.

  “The gift of sight, if you’d rather,” Neil said. “She sees things that are to come, as well as things that happen in other worlds besides this one.”

  “You lost me at other worlds,” Zeke said, speaking for the first time.

  “We live in this world, Midgard. Over the centuries, we’ve been so caught up in our own lives that we’ve forgotten a time when the gods mingled and interfered in human affairs,” Neil said. “Humans may only live on this world, but there are other worlds besides this one. And they aren’t always content to stay contained within their borders as we are.”

  “Can we get through this rip into the other worlds?” Eliot asked, even more gorgeous with curiosity and excitement lighting up his eyes.

  Neil hesitated before answering. “As far as I know, no one ever has.”

  “Which means if someone did, they didn’t come back,” Eliot said. “Doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

  I shivered and held tighter to Zeke’s hand.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “So the night we were born, something came through into this world, and my mother saw it. But if you’re not the twins’ father, why were you at the hospital?”

  Neil gave a small smile. “Xander broke his arm,” he said. “He’s always been reckless, even back then.”

  Xander scowled. “I’m not reckless.”

  “We were all at the hospital that night,” Neil said. “Everyone in this room.”

  “Yeah, but there must have been a lot more people, too,” Peyton said. “Where are they?”

  “We don’t know how many other beings came through that night, gods and giants and other things. But we know that when they did, six kids flat-lined at once.”

  The six of us looked around at each other.

  “Us?” Zeke asked.

  “You.”

  “I knew it,” Xander said. “You think we’re possessed by demons.”

  “We don’t know what it is,” Neil said. “But we think you’re hosting something.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Zeke

  Xander snort-laughed so hard I thought he might give himself kidney stones, but it made perfect sense to me. I couldn’t speak for the others, but I’d always felt like a god, so I figured that’s what was inside me. Sweet. Who wouldn’t want to find out they were hosting a god? I mean, it was a lot better than some of the other things people could host. Like tapeworms. Nobody wanted to host a tapeworm.

  “Are you sure?” Gwen asked. “I mean, are you sure we all are?”

  I caught her doubtful look at Xander, who was still honking like a goose. Pretty sure he caught the look, too, though he’d never give it away. But let’s just say if I picked up on something, it was a pretty sure bet all my siblings had already picked up on it, like, yesterday.

  “We’re not sure of anything,” Neil said. “Except the facts. We were all at the hospital that night. The six of you flat-lined at once for inexplicable reasons that were never medically explained. You all survived. Your families…didn’t. We don’t know how long the rip was there beforehand, or what else came through after that night. But Olivia is accurate in her predictions, and she says something powerful came through that night.”

  “So it was all true?” Gwen asked, looking at her mom like she’d just found out she was adopted. “You weren’t sick all that time, you were just selfish?”

  “I was protecting you,” Olivia said.

  “From what? All this?” Gwen asked, gesturing around at our sweet house. “From being rich? From being a normal person capable of carrying on a conversation with a normal human being?”

  “From the giants,” Olivia said.

  “And yet, Neil’s done a fine job protecting all his kids without living out of a dumpster.”

  I wanted to squeeze her hand, to calm her down and tell her it was all okay. But it didn’t sound like her life had been okay at all.

  “I should have known I could never have a normal life,” Gwen said. “Not even for a week.”

  “I told you what I saw,” Olivia said. “I didn’t lie to you. You always knew what we were up against.”

  “And I’m supposed to be happy about that? Why? What did these people miss out on by not knowing? They got a house, and family, and friends. I got a lifetime of running and loneliness.”

  “We ran together,” Olivia said. “We had each other.”

  “No,” Gwen said, gripping the edge of the table. “We ran for you. None of that was for me. If you’d wanted to do what was best for me, you would have come here a long time ago.”

  Gwen’s face had gone all pink with anger, and I had to say, she did look pretty hot when she was mad. But Peyton had told me never to say that to a girl, and I didn’t figure I should interrupt their argument, anyway.

  “That’s not important now,” Dad said firmly. “You’re with us now, and we can’t change the past.”

  “But what about all the other things you said you saw?” Gwen asked her mom, ignoring Dad. “The monsters and wolves and giants. Things coming after us. Ravens spying on us. What about Fenrir and the end of the world?”

  “I told you what I saw,” Olivia said.

  “It can’t be true,” Gwen said. “It just can’t. There’s only one world. This one.” She stopped talking, her breath coming fast.

  I squeezed her hand. The urge to be near her was like an itch, and touching her was the only way to scratch it. Besides, the chick looked like she was about to have a panic attack, and it was my job to make things okay for her. I didn’t know why, but it was.

  “How can you know that?” Eliot asked. “Just because it’s all you’ve ever known and experienced, that doesn’t mean it’s all there is.”

  “Yeah, I’ve never been to space, but I believe in aliens,” I pointed out.

  “I don’t think that’s helping his case,” Peyton said, rolling her eyes.

  But I knew I’d helped, because Gwen’s hand relaxed in mine.

  “What’s real to you, Mom, isn’t real for other people,” Gwen said, more gently this time.

  “Before last week, you’d never eaten lobster, or stood by an outdoor fireplace, or been in a mansion,” Olivia said. “I know you’ve had a small life up until now, and I’m sorry that you’re upset about it. But these things are real, Gwen. They may not be real in this world, but they’re out there. And they’re coming.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Eliot asked.

  “Yes,” Dad said. “We believe you were sent here to stop them, somehow. I’ve been trying to bring you all together for the past ten years to see if you can stop them.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s so wrong with them being here?”

  “I think they’re the reason so many of you are without parents,” Dad said, looking around at us. “Everyone here has lost someone.”

  I looked around. We’d lost Mom. Olivia and Gwen had lost Gwen’s dad. And I guess the twins had lost another family, although I didn’t see how that could come as a shock to them. I mean, I’d always wondered because twins were supposed to look exactly alike, and no one could confuse my brothers unless they were super dumb. They didn’t look alike at all. I always figured Mom must have had an affair, si
nce Finn didn’t look anything like Dad. At least Eliot had the same hair color.

  “What about us?” Peyton asked, interrupting us as we all looked at each other, weighing our losses against the others’.

  Dad’s shoulders slumped.

  “You said that Xander broke his arm,” Peyton said. “And Finn, Eliot, and Gwen were all born within hours of each other. What about me and Zeke?”

  “Also adopted,” Dad said. “But you are brother and sister. The night this happened, you were in the NICU, Peyton. You were premature, so you’d been staying there. On her way to visit you, your mother was in an accident. She and Zeke were being treated for injuries.”

  I figured I should have seen that coming. I mean, if I was part god, that meant one of my parents was a god, and I didn’t think Dad was very godlike. And obviously a god wouldn’t die, so that ruled out Mom.

  “Great,” Xander said, slumping against the doorframe. “I’m the only one related to you?”

  The not-twins glared at him.

  “I don’t care, you’re still Dad to me,” I said. “And you guys are all my brothers.”

  “Agreed,” Peyton said.

  I meant it, but I won’t lie, I did feel a little closer to Peyton now. Maybe it was just because she was sitting beside me.

  “Is anyone really surprised by this?” Xander snarled, like we were all stupid. We actually were, compared to him. Dude was too smart for his own good.

  “I am,” Peyton said bluntly.

  Xander scowled. “I’m six months older than Zeke,” he said. “Didn’t you ever wonder about that?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Peyton said, straightening and flipping her ponytail like she was about to lay the smackdown on one of her bitchy friends. Our school was too small to have more than one popular clique, so there was always some backstabbing going on, which I usually heard about from both sides. Of course I always took Peyton’s side. She was my sister. But also because she could throw shade like a lesbian cheerleader from hell.

  Or as it turned out, lesbian cheerleader goddess. Because if I was part god, that meant she was, too. I was pretty sure, at least.

  “I knew,” Eliot said quietly after a minute of watching Peyton and Xander stare each other down. Eliot shrugged, looking uncomfortable when we turned his way. “I knew Mom couldn’t be both of your mothers. I figured Xander was Dad’s son with some old girlfriend or something.”

  “Why me?” Xander asked, throwing up his hands. Everyone in the room gave him an incredulous look. I didn’t really understand, so I tried to psychically convey that I was with Xander on this one, in case that was one of my god abilities.

  “Because…it’s obvious,” Gwen said at last.

  “Why don’t you shut up,” Xander growled. “You don’t even belong here, let alone need to witness a fucked up moment in this fucked up family.”

  I watched Gwen shrink beside me, and I put my arm around her shoulders, regretting my momentary feeling of camaraderie with Xander. “Dude,” I said. “Not cool. Leave her alone.”

  “She belongs here as much as all of you,” Dad said.

  “As far as I can see, I’m the only one who belongs here,” Xander said. “Lucky me.”

  “To be honest, I thought that’s who I was tracking down,” Eliot said, nodding at Olivia. “I thought you were trying to find your ex-girlfriend who dumped her son on you.”

  “Too bad that’s not how it happened,” Xander said. “I’m sure Dad would love to ditch me on some stranger if he could.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Dad said, frowning at Xander.

  “As much as I’d love to stick around and listen to you all bicker, I have to admit, you’re right,” Gwen said. “I don’t belong in this conversation.”

  “So go,” Xander snarled at her. “No one wants you here, and you’re only making yourself look like an asshole.”

  “Fine,” she said, standing with a lot of poise for such a little girl. “While you figure out your family drama, I’ll be taking a nap. You’re all crazy, anyway. There’s nothing inside us but blood and guts, just like everyone else.”

  Gwen turned, and I started to rise to go after her. Then I realized what I was doing and sat back down, but just being away from her for a minute had started to twist my gut. Like I had to be with her twenty-four seven, or I’d explode. The girl was seriously messing with my mojo. I couldn’t get enough of her.

  “Give her some time to process,” Olivia said to me. “She’s not used to so much commotion and conflict.”

  I nodded, figuring she was right. I couldn’t imagine being the only kid in this house, without all my brothers and Peyton. It would be like walking around with half my body missing. That would make walking around really hard.

  Peyton turned to Dad. “How could you not tell us?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dad said. “I knew the day would come when I had to tell you. I just didn’t want it to come so soon.”

  “Dad, I’m almost eighteen,” I said. “How long were you going to wait?”

  “Until I found the key to all this,” he said, nodding to where Gwen had disappeared up the stairs.

  “What if you hadn’t found her?” Peyton asked.

  “I was confident I would,” Dad said, taking Olivia’s hand. “And if I hadn’t…I would have told you children about her and sent you to find her when you graduated.”

  “When who graduated?” Xander asked.

  “One of you,” Dad said. I figured I had a better chance of graduating this year than Xander, so he must have meant me. Which was cool because I seemed to be taking this better than everyone else. Dad had always been our dad, and he still was. We hadn’t found out anything surprising, like that Dad was really a demon. That would have been hard to believe.

  “So tell us how you ended up with all these kids,” Olivia said.

  “Yeah, Dad, why don’t you tell them,” Xander said. “And in case anyone’s wondering, yes, I already knew that none of you were Dad’s kids, but he wouldn’t let me tell you.” He shot Dad a withering glare.

  I figured the guy had a right to be pissed. We may have had our differences, but we’d always been family, always had each other’s backs. We’d stuck with Xander even when he made psycho friends, got arrested, or punched some idiot at school. It must have killed him that he couldn’t tell us something like this. He’d never stopped treating us like his family, so I wasn’t pissed at him for not telling us. Knowing Dad, he’d held something massive over Xander’s head to keep his mouth shut. Probably yet another reason Xander and Dad had the shittiest relationship of any of us.

  “Sure,” Dad said, raking his hand through his dark hair. “After you had your vision at the hospital, Olivia, I didn’t really put too much into it, but it disturbed me. So I did some research, and I found out all about the gods and monsters you saw.”

  “Giants,” Olivia corrected.

  “Right,” Dad said. “I was curious about what had happened to Xander, and soon after I found out about the other kids whose hearts had stopped at the same moment. With a little help from a nurse in financial need, I was able to get their names.”

  “Nice,” I said, because Dad knew how to work people when he needed to, but I knew he really had helped that nurse. He probably paid her a lot more than she’d asked for that information.

  Dad turned to me and Peyton, his face all sad and grim. “Right away, I looked them up and found out that your mother hadn’t made it. She’d seemed fine, and they were about to release her, but when they went to wake her, she had passed.”

  “Oh, wow,” Peyton said, her eyes all wide and shiny. “I…I wish I’d had a chance to meet her.”

  “Someone tried to check you out of the hospital that day, saying he was your father, but when they asked for ID, he refused to provide it. Security escorted him out when he caused a scene. Whether or not he was your real father, he never came back for you. They contacted the number on file for your father, and he said he couldn’t take care of two k
ids all by himself.” Dad took Peyton’s hand. “He was grief-stricken over the loss of his wife.”

  “Maybe there’s more to it,” Eliot said quietly.

  “We’ll never know,” Dad said. “When I found this out from the nurse, you were both still in the hospital. We went in and took you both home, and you were ours by Christmas that year.”

  I figured that was another thing money could do, one I’d never thought of—get your adoption paperwork pushed through faster. I did the math in my head. I would have been three. Peyton was zero. No wonder we didn’t remember our birth parents...or did I? Maybe those weird memories that didn’t fit were real after all, like walking with Mom at the duck pond, or Dad telling me that when I lost my helium balloon that it had gone up to heaven.

  “Did he ever come looking for us?” I asked.

  Dad shook his head. “I looked him up when you were a little older, when your mother…when my wife got sick. I thought maybe instead of watching us go through that, maybe you had a father out there looking for you, one who regretted a decision made in grief. That maybe he’d want to spend a weekend with you now and then, give you a break from life here. I thought you deserved to know your birth father. All I found was his obituary.”

  “I guess that ends that,” Peyton said, slumping in her chair. “We don’t have another family, then.”

  Dad shook his head, looking kind of miserable. I felt bad for the dude, having to tell us all this at once. It was kind of his fault for waiting until he had to tell us all together. Except Xander, who had probably figured it out himself and confronted Dad. Didn’t sound like our biological dad was a winner anyway, and I knew Dad was a total winner. All you had to do was look around to see that.

  “And us?” Finn asked.

  Dad looked uncomfortable, which I figured was something he’d never let any of his board members see. But he was being real with us. “Finn,” he said with a sigh. “Your birth mother was never married. She was apparently an addict, and when you were eighteen months old, the neighbors called child services on her for trying to give you to them. She said you were talking in tongues.”